‘Unimag­in­ably high’ rates of abor­tion, says ob/gyn doc­tor

The num­ber of un­wanted preg­nan­cies in Tai­wan is high and the num­ber of abor­tions car­ried out is “be­yond imag­i­na­tion,” ac­cord­ing to an ob/gyn doc­tor.

Chen Ching-hui of Taipei Med­i­cal Univer­sity Hos­pi­tal said that ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics com­piled by the Min­istry of Health and Wel­fare, only 70 per­cent of mar­ried women aged be­tween 20 and 49 prac­tice birth con­trol.

In her out­pa­tient ex­pe­ri­ence, she said, more than 60 per­cent of mar­ried cou­ples plan their first births, but up to 80 per­cent did not ex­pect their sec­ond preg­nancy.

Chen said that some cou­ples give birth to a sec­ond child re­luc­tantly, while 40 per­cent choose abor­tion.

The med­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment es­ti­mates that up to 500,000 fe­tuses are dis­posed of each year.

Lin Si-hong, also an ob/gyn, said Tai­wan has around 200,000 new­borns a year, but the num­ber of peo­ple tak­ing the RU486 “morn­ing af­ter” pill to pre­vent conception is around 400,000, in­di­cat­ing that 30 per­cent of preg­nant women opt for giv­ing birth, while the rest choose abor­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Chen, the high un­wanted preg­nancy rate is re­lated to fail­ure to use con­doms, or mis­takes in “safe pe­riod” cal­cu­la­tions.

Some women’s lack of ini­tia­tive in us­ing con­doms, as well as some men’s re­luc­tance to use them, also con­trib­ute to un­wanted preg­nan­cies.

Lin said that Tai­wanese peo­ple should change their con­cept of abor­tion, not­ing that con­tra­cep­tive de­vices im­planted into women’s wombs do not nec­es­sar­ily make women un­com­fort­able or their part­ners un­happy.